


The Quiet Room

by copperbadge



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Infidelity, Multi, Not COE compliant, Semi-Public Sex, Team Bonding, Team Dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-10-07
Updated: 2008-10-07
Packaged: 2017-11-26 18:28:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/653151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/copperbadge/pseuds/copperbadge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Inside this room, no one talks," Ianto said, his voice carefully neutral. "It isn't allowed. What goes on here stays here and, outside of it, never happened. Other than that there are no rules, in a manner of speaking."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Quiet Room

**Author's Note:**

> Written in response to [exuberantself](http://exuberantself.livejournal.com/38339.html).
> 
> Now [a podfic](http://copperbadge.livejournal.com/2846929.html) by filthgoblin! Also this inspired an Avengers fic, [The Room Of Requirement](http://archiveofourown.org/works/456438).

"Jack said I ought to do this part," Ianto Jones said to Gwen, as they walked down a dim, slightly damp cement hallway off the main Hub. 

His voice sounded strange, tagged by an echo. Until now he hadn't really pinged Gwen's radar much. He was a shadow in the background, an odd aberration -- butler to the alien-hunters -- but nothing she had to pay much mind to. When Captain Jack was in the room he took up a lot of attention, and what was left over she'd spent on studying Suzie (second in command, after all, and after that, well, suicidal) and Owen (dangerously sarcastic) and Toshiko (terrifyingly intellectual). Now that she'd had the first-day tour of the upper levels, however, Jack had passed her to Ianto and Ianto had processed her paperwork briskly before telling her there were one or two things left to explain. 

"He says I'm tactful," Ianto continued, considering it. "I'm not certain where he drew that illusion, but I suppose in comparison everyone is. Ah. Shower room," he added, stepping through an open doorway. Rusty lockers stood along one wall. Four of them bore initials: JH, TS, OH (with "mama" scrawled crudely underneath), IJ. If Suzie had a locker it had already been cleared out, she guessed. Probably by the efficient Ianto Jones.

"We don't fuss overmuch about modesty. Especially if one's clothes are being eaten by corrosive excretion, or on fire," Ianto said. 

"On _fire?_ Does that happen often?"

"Owen, once," Ianto replied, looking as if he were savouring the memory. "In the general course of things, barring chemicals or pyrotechnics, we simply turn our heads. Women shower down there, men down here," he continued, pointing to two separate cubicles, six showerheads each, divided by a cement wall. Various soaps and shampoos adorned shelves nearby. "This way..."

She followed him out of the locker-room again, continuing deeper, further away from the atrium of the Hub. The hallway widened and then abruptly ended in a doorway. Ianto leaned in the frame and reached inside briefly, flicking on a light.

"This is the Quiet Room," he said, his body blocking the entry just enough to keep her from walking inside. She could see it clearly, though: a long sofa, two elderly wing-back chairs, a floor lamp...and a large bed, neatly made, with a nightstand next to it.

"For kipping overnight?" she asked.

"Among other things. It's a sort of...safety valve, I suppose one would call it. Inside this room, no one talks," Ianto said, his voice carefully neutral. "It isn't allowed. What goes on here stays here and, outside of it, never happened. Other than that there are no rules, in a manner of speaking."

Gwen looked up at him, confused.

"Sleeping, reading, a meal away from the atrium...sex," he said with a shrug. "No one is ever barred from the room. While it's an informal unwritten arrangement, the Captain is always available here."

" _What?_ "

"Surely that's not what startles you?" he asked. "You've met Jack."

"No, the whole -- _sex?_ "

"No-one else knows what you do. No-one else will ever understand as fully as Torchwood does -- "

"I have a boyfriend!"

"Not in this room," Ianto said quietly. "Not if you don't want to."

"That's mad."

"Welcome to Torchwood."

"Was this Jack's invention then? Is that the sort of place -- "

"No. Shocking, I know," he said drily. "It was instituted sometime in the forties, I believe; the decor's been updated since." He turned to her. "You'll understand, PC Cooper. If you don't care to come here, nobody will force you. Owen and Suzie do -- did, I suppose -- sometimes. Tosh sleeps here perhaps two nights a week. No one bothers her when she does. I think sometimes Jack comes and sits with her, nothing more."

"But..." Gwen gestured at it. 

"There must be a place to go when there isn't anyplace to go," Ianto said firmly. Gwen stared into the homey little room, with the handful of paperback novels strewn over the nightstand and the blanket on the back of the sofa. Chairs, bed, lamp...

"Do you ever come here?" Gwen asked curiously. 

"No. I don't have the same requirements you do," Ianto replied. He pushed away from the entrance and shoved his hands in his pockets. "I don't go into the field. On the rare occasions the field comes to us, I'm generally shoved behind something heavy and told to sit still."

He gave her a small smile. 

"Don't let it bother you. All you need to know is that it's there," he said, and began walking back down the corridor.

***

A month and a half later, Lisa Hallett's steel-encrusted body was being incinerated by Owen while Ianto slept, heavily sedated, in the Quiet Room. Gwen came down to see and found Jack sitting in one of the chairs, watching over him. She opened her mouth and Jack shook his head sharply. 

There were footsteps in the hall and Tosh brushed past her into the room without a second thought. She shot a glance at Jack and took off her shoes neatly before lying down on the bed, curling herself around Ianto protectively. 

When Gwen checked again in the morning, they were gone.

***

Three months later, maybe four, Gwen found herself in the Quiet Room, clean and warm for what felt like the first time in days, with fresh bandages on the bird-shot wounds in her hip. She had her head on Jack's shoulder and his arm was cradling her; Owen was pressed up against her other side, looking sullen and exhausted. Ianto was lying on the bed again, the white bandage on his face luminous under the lamp, a bruise still darkening on his forehead. His eyes, wide and hugely dilated, flicked slowly back and forth from Jack to her to Owen. Tosh, this time, was in _his_ arms, face pressed tightly against his collarbone. 

Sometime before she went home to Rhys, sometime before she left Rhys again and found Owen in a place they could talk and shout and make noise, Tosh's shivering stilled and Ianto's hands began to move. There was a soft moan -- she thought Ianto. 

She turned her head and buried it in Jack's coat. He laughed softly and gently turned her back, a silent command to look. 

It was clumsy, fumbling, incautious but slow, and Gwen thought she would be embarrassed to see it but she wasn't. Ianto was holding desperately tight, Tosh squirming against him, their hips moving in time, most of their clothing still on. It was oddly -- vital, some kind of desperate act to prove to the world they were still alive. Owen touched her hand and then gripped it tightly, but otherwise he didn't move. When she looked at Jack's face he was watching with impassive gravity. _Witnessing_ it. 

None of them spoke, not even Ianto when he arched and gasped, not even Tosh when she shuddered against him. And when it was done Jack stood and stroked Tosh's hair once and kissed Ianto on the forehead and left.

***

Gwen and Owen never went there during the brief few weeks of the affair. There was no way they would have been able to separate the sex they had from the life they led, and that was a hard and fast rule she had already learned well.

***

When Jack left them for the Doctor, Owen and Ianto disappeared soon after. Eventually Tosh came running to get Gwen and dragged her down to the Quiet Room and they stood in the doorway and watched. 

Ianto and Owen were fighting -- dirty, bloody fighting, neither of them saying a word or even making a noise. Owen was much better at it but Ianto had a blind fury on his side that was evening the odds, plus he had height and reach on Owen and Owen had recently been shot. Neither woman was particularly surprised when Ianto finally wrestled him onto the bed, a hand on each wrist to keep them still, and simply held him there. 

During the fight Gwen thought Ianto might have been compelled to expend all that energy. Looking at Owen, struggling and crying at the same time, she realised it wasn't Ianto who needed it that day at all. 

***

_The Toclafane got Gwen last. They found her in the Quiet Room, and as she fired round after round of useless bullets they taunted her. It was the first time she'd ever heard anyone speak in that room._

***

The morning after Jack came back, when they were finally safe to come into the Hub again, Gwen went down to the locker room to fetch a compact mirror from her locker. She hadn't even opened it when she heard a soft noise echoing down the hall.

Ianto and Jack were in the bed in the Quiet Room, tangled together, naked, the blankets twisted and half-discarded. Jack opened his eyes when he saw her and raised his eyebrows with a grin, an invitation. Gwen laughed and shook her head. 

Jack tipped his shoulders in a shrug -- _too bad, could have been fun_ \-- and kissed Ianto's jaw as he slept. 

***

Gwen once found Jack sitting crosslegged on the bed, a rare drink in one hand, sifting through old photographs. He couldn't tell her the stories, but he was in each of them -- here with an arm around a young soldier's waist, there in a suit with a bride standing behind him. 

She did laugh at one that showed him and two lithe, acrobatic-looking men in leotards. 

***

The day after Tosh and Owen died, she found Ianto asleep on the couch in the Quiet Room at the same time Jack came looking for him. Jack bent and woke him gently, silently, and kissed him. This time, when he looked over his shoulder at Gwen, she nodded and stepped inside the room. 

She didn't regret it for a moment. When the sting of death had faded a little, she even had fond memories of being warmed by their bodies, cradled protectively between the two men. 

***

"Did..." said the new medic, on his second day at Torchwood, looking at her seriously and a little fearfully when she asked him if he had any questions. "Did Ianto show you the...room down there?"

"The Quiet Room?" she asked.

"Is it a joke? It seems like the kind of joke he'd pull."

She gave him a reassuring smile. "You'll understand when you need to."


End file.
